


Courtney Crumrin in the Old World

by TeaRoses



Category: Courtney Crumrin (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Courtney Crumrin and her uncle Aloysius travel to Prague, both to see the sights and for his own mysterious errand. My own AU version of the trip announced in "Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Yuletide Rare Fandoms exchange, as a New Year's Resolution. 
> 
> I realize people in the pagan community have a specific definition and a very negative meaning for the word "warlock." However it is the word used for the magic-using males in Courtney Crumrin canon (or was at the time of writing) and I have used it here.
> 
> I would like to thank the "Little Details" community at Live Journal for enormous amounts of help with the details of this story, especially the atmosphere of the city of Prague. I'd also like to thank my friend "wtfsad" for editing help.

Courtney began to complain to her uncle on the way over the Atlantic. She was exhausted, and had never been on a trip this long before.

"You're a warlock; can't we just fly there or something?"

"We are flying, Courtney. Now be quiet," Aloysius Crumrin replied.

After hours of silence and boredom the plane landed and they retrieved their small suitcases.

"Now we have to take a bus, too?"

Her uncle glared at her. "I brought you to Prague with me under the impression that you were not a whiny brat like so many others. Do not disappoint me."

Courtney stopped talking then. She knew better than to get on Uncle Aloysius's nerves too much. When they got off the bus her uncle silently began walking and she followed him, rolling her suitcase behind her.

The sidewalks were made of small squares, set in black and white patterns. The cars on the street were parked so close together Courtney could barely see space between them. But when she stopped staring at her uncle's back and looked up, it was the buildings that struck her. There simply weren't buildings like this where she came from.

They were made of stone, with beautiful ornate carvings, and small multi-paned windows. People had made these buildings centuries ago, with love and care. It was like something from a fairy tale. "Or the Twilight Kingdom," she thought to herself.

But the people she saw were just people, dressed in ordinary clothes like hers and looking almost out of place among the storybook architecture.

It was close to evening now. Uncle Aloysius made a right turn into a side street and brought her into a small restaurant. She had realized by now that he was very familiar with this city.

"Was this place here the last time you were here?" she asked him as they sat down.

Her uncle narrowed his eyes a bit as he looked at her. "Not this exact place. But the city hasn't changed as much as I thought it might have. It wasn't badly hit in the last war."

Courtney added up numbers in her mind. "How old were you when you-"

Her uncle, who was of course really some generations removed, shook his head at her sharply.

They sat silently looking at menus for a minute, then Courtney said, "You aren't just going to sit there like a rock this whole trip are you?"

He looked up, his face softening slightly in a way she had seldom seen since he had announced the trip as her birthday present.

"No, I'm not. I brought you here for a reason, though I do have my own business as well."

She asked for his help with the menu. He claimed little knowledge of the language, but pointed out several dishes to her. "Order whatever you like. Food is very affordable here."

Money was the least of Uncle Aloysius's problems, but she decided not to bring that subject up now. But when the food came, she tried to make conversation again.

"Ms. Crisp told me we should see someone's house… Frank something…"

"Franz, I imagine. Franz Kafka," replied her uncle. "Is his house a tourist site now? But you're too young to know who he is."

Courtney shrugged. "She said someday I'd want to be able to say I saw it. And a bunch of other stuff here."

"Ms. Crisp is a sensible enough woman," her uncle said.

"I don't think that's what she says about you."

He looked angry, then gave a short bark of a laugh. "As I said, a sensible woman."

As they finished their meal a group of three older men approached the restaurant. Courtney's uncle made a gesture toward the men through the window and paid quickly. He brought her outside, and introduced them to her, giving Russian-sounding names that Courtney almost immediately forgot. The men spoke rapidly to her uncle in another language, but to her, they merely nodded silently. She knew they must be warlocks, and his friends, but beyond that she wasn't certain.

"We'll be staying with them," said her uncle to her curtly.

"I thought you didn't speak the language," she said.

"These men speak German also."

She hadn't known that he spoke German either. One of the men picked up Courtney's suitcase and they walked to a large car. She sat in the back seat, next to her uncle, and spent her time looking out the window. As they left the center of the city, the beautiful old buildings were interspersed with ugly blocks of apartments. She saw the occasional fast food restaurant or storefront also, but this place still didn't look like the United States.

The men spoke among themselves occasionally in low voices, in what sounded like more than one language. Uncle Aloysius would speak seldom, but it was clear to Courtney that he could understand everything they said. She had just opened her mouth to ask her uncle how far they were going when the car stopped in front of an apartment building.

Eventually Courtney found herself in an apartment that, while clean and furnished, seemed disused.

"How come we're not staying in a hotel?" asked Courtney. "I saw some nice ones on the way over."

"Those places aren't as nice as they look from the outside, Courtney. And this is bigger and more convenient than any hotel room."

Courtney decided not to argue with logic.

Her uncle showed her to a bedroom and told her to unpack the few clothes she had brought with her. When he said good night to her she insisted she was staying up. He shrugged and told her mildly that she could suit herself, and said nothing further when she settled down on a couch in the living room with a book.

One of the men had left, and returned now with a few basic food items. They all stood in a group then and spoke at length. Some of them produced old-looking books, and seemed to make excited declarations about the contents. Uncle Aloysius was shrugging and shaking his head frequently. Courtney thought to herself that this was much like the activities of the coven at home, and for that matter almost everything else he did. He was not going to be co-operative.

When they finally left Courtney looked up at him.

"I hope the whole trip isn't going to be like this. You having meetings with your boring warlock friends while I just sit here."

"As I recall, no one asked you to sit there," he said. "But no, they'll be busy for the next few days and we will see some of the sights."

"OK then," said Courtney

She thought a moment. "I guess you'll just get mad if I ask you who those men are and what you're doing."

He didn't look angry, but he shook his head. "As you may have guessed, they're warlocks from among the local equivalent of the Coven of Mystics, highly respected men. I'd rather not discuss our plans, but I'm sure you'll find out eventually if they work out. I doubt I could stop you from knowing anything, even for your own good."

"Why are they all men? There are no witches with any power here?" asked Courtney.

"I haven't asked after everyone yet," said her uncle. "But things have always been different in the Old World."

In the morning they ate bread and cheese, and her uncle paid for a taxi to take them to various tourist sites.

Courtney saw the inside of some of those impressive old buildings now, including a beautiful church that was all pink marble and gold leaf. They did see the building Franz Kafka had lived in. It was actually pretty in itself, with carvings on the outside, but she wasn't sure what she was supposed to want to remember about it. Uncle Aloysius went with her into every building but showed little interest, mostly nodding at her comments and being his usual taciturn self. She asked several times if he had been to these places before, but he mostly claimed not to remember, though he did at one point tell her a little about Kafka's books.

"They sound crazy," she said.

"Crazier than your own life?" he asked.

"Not much," she admitted.

They walked through cobblestone streets to the town square, where she saw the Astronomical Clock, which told not only the time but the zodiac. She watched the glittering face and shining wheels for a long while, until the hour changed and she saw the parade of moving apostles and dancing skeletons.

She looked at her uncle and saw he was gazing at it also. When the mechanical procession was over he turned to her and said, "I admit I always like to see that clock. People make amazing things, though sometimes for no particular reason."

"Why skeletons, though? And that thing that looks like Death, ringing the bell?" Courtney asked him.

"With time comes death, obviously," replied her uncle.

"But why act so happy about it?" she persisted.

"One had just as well act happy about it, when there is no hope."

"You never act happy about anything anyway," muttered Courtney.

"You'll understand someday," he replied.

"Don't say typical grown-up things at me," she retorted. "I expect better from you."

"Grown-up things?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You know, the stuff grown-ups tell you to get you to shut up? Remember that from when you were a kid?"

"What makes you think I was ever a kid?" he asked. His tone was severe, but when she looked at him she saw that he was almost giving one of his extremely rare smiles.

They began walking away from the Town Square, and Uncle Aloysius said, "If you think those dancing skeletons are interesting perhaps you'd like to see the ossuary tomorrow."

"The what?"

"It's a crypt, the burial place of a chapel, and it's decorated in bones," replied her uncle.

"Bones from dead people? No way."

"You'll see," he replied evenly.

They had no visitors that night, though her uncle spent some time talking on the phone in English. He shooed her out of the room and she was about to protest that she had a right to know, but in the end she let it pass.

When she heard him hang up she went back in, and saw him sitting at the table with a tiny gray object in front of him. He was hunched over, clearly doing painstaking work. She watched, and was about to open her mouth to ask what he was doing when he spotted her himself and gave her another of his looks.

"Do you need something, Courtney?" he asked.

"A glass of water," she said, heading for the kitchen.

She tried to speak to him again when she saw he had put his secret project away, but he was in a silent and grave mood yet again. She went to sleep early.

The bone chapel was in a place called Kutna Hora, which was a day trip from Prague. Courtney was cranky as usual on the trip but when she got there she was not at all disappointed. She had never seen anything quite like this place. It was covered in artistically arranged bones, with piles of skulls, bone towers, and bone murals.

"This looks like something a few creatures I've met would do," she whispered to her uncle at one point.

"These were people, and they didn't capture living victims to eat," he replied dryly. "These are all just bodies of those who died and were buried here, long before the monks decided to use the bones."

"Did those people know this would happen to them? Someone messing around like that with their skulls?" asked Courtney.

"They knew they would be a pile of bones someday. Does it matter what happens after that?" he asked.

Courtney shook her head. "I think it matters. But at least they got made into art. Even if it's weird art."

They went back to the apartment that night, both in a somber mood. Uncle Aloysius said his business would leave them another day free for sight-seeing if she wished.

"What are we going to see now?" asked Courtney.

"I thought we would see the castle, and perhaps the old Jewish quarter," he said.

"Jews had to live in a special place?" she asked. "But now they can live wherever they want, can't they?"

Her uncle gave her a look of reproach. "The ones who do live here. Doesn't Ms. Crisp teach you anything in regular school?"

Courtney remembered a lesson about the war then, and understood his look. "Yeah, sometimes, when the kids shut up for a while."

"School can be useful, however much you may hate it," he replied.

Her uncle went to make more phone calls then, and she stood in the hallway this time and tried to listen.

She heard him speak to someone on the other end in English.

"Yes, they say it tried to come out to fight them," he was saying.

There was a silence, and eventually Uncle Aloysius replied.

"That's ridiculous. If it were merely buried under a pile of books someone would have found it long ago. But if there is another protection involved—"

Her uncle saw her then, and pointed to her room. She shrugged her shoulders, cursed under her breath, and went off to sleep, still looking forward to the next day in a small way.


	2. Chapter 2

Prague Castle was a huge place. They could have explored it for hours and still only seen part of it. Courtney enjoyed the gardens and the interiors, and even her uncle looked around with some interest and commented on the beauty of the architecture.

Courtney was affronted however by a tour guide who asked her if she were pretending to be a princess.

"How old does that moron think I am?" she asked sarcastically.

"You don't want to be a princess anymore?" her uncle asked in an amused tone.

"Princesses are OK," she muttered. "It's the kings that get on my nerves."

Uncle Aloysius was quiet for a while, and then asked if she still wanted to see the Jewish quarter after lunch. She agreed, and they ate another good inexpensive meal. Her uncle still didn't speak. He appeared to be thinking about something. Courtney was sure it must be his business with the warlocks, whatever it was.

The Jewish Quarter's narrow streets were packed with tourists. Courtney's uncle took her to the Jewish Museum and other sites there, including one he called the Old-New Synagogue.

"It looks just old," she said.

"It was named New long ago. But it was Rabbi Judah Loew's synagogue, in the sixteenth century," said her uncle.

"I suppose you're going to tell me that I should know who he is from school too," she said.

"Not from your regular school," he answered.

They passed through one part of the museum to the old Jewish cemetery. Courtney picked her way through the old tombstones, which were packed together and toppling.

"You can hardly walk through this place," she said.

"It's worse than you think. There are several levels of graves underneath us. They just kept adding earth," her uncle said.

"Couldn't they build a new cemetery?" she asked.

"Not for many years, and then it was too late. But come here, I'll show you Rabbi Loew's grave."

"So why's this Rabbi so important? We're not Jewish, are we?" she asked.

"No," said her uncle. "But Rabbi Loew made the golem."

"So what's that?"

"The golem was an artificial servant, shaped like a man, which was made of clay. Rabbi Loew built it from ancient formulas and animated it," he said.

She looked at the Hebrew writing on the tombstone.

"He was a warlock?"

Uncle Aloysius shook his head. "He was a kabbalist. A mystic, but of a different sort. He built the golem to protect the Jews. But some warlocks think we could make it serve again."

"Is that what you've been talking to all these men about?"

"Yes. They say he hid the golem right there in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue."

Courtney remembered her uncle's phone conversation.

"How come nobody found it?"

"Mystical spells. And after a while people stopped looking, and stopped believing it was really there. But Frederick Amherst, a visiting British warlock who has studied the subject, is sure he has the magic to see it. And there's a simple spell to get in and out of the attic without being seen. He plans to try it tonight."

"If it's been there for hundreds of years, why don't they just leave it alone?"

Her uncle didn't answer, merely picked up a small round stone from the grass and put it on the tombstone, where many others were lined up.

"Why do people put rocks on there?" asked Courtney.

"I'm not certain anyone knows why,"

Courtney thought that could answer both her questions.

They had dinner in another restaurant. Uncle Aloysius lingered over coffee, asking the waitress for a drink called Becherovka also. Courtney watched as he drank and brooded. When they got home, Courtney heard him speak briefly and quietly on the phone.

When he hung up, she asked him, "Are we going to go to that attic tonight and find this thing?"

"I could hardly bring you along on something like that. And I can't leave you alone here either."

"Sorry I'm such a pain," she said sarcastically.

"It doesn't matter," he replied. "They'll bring it here, if they find it."

"Won't they get in trouble for taking it?"

"Why? Except for a few warlocks, and I suppose a few Jews, no one believes in the golem anymore."

"Why did the rabbi hide it in the first place? Why not just keep it?"

"Some say he was afraid the golem would get out of control. Or that it would fall into the wrong hands."

"Sounds like he got that right," she snorted.

"Courtney," warned her uncle.

She sat down on the couch. "So, you know how to make it alive again?"

"I'm not sure if it's ever alive or dead, technically, but yes."

"And I'm supposed to hide in my room while you do all this?" she asked.

"No," replied her uncle. "I've decided there wasn't much point in bringing you here to Prague with me if you won't be allowed to see this. If you behave intelligently, you may stay."

Courtney muttered something angry and sat down with her book again for what seemed like hours. Eventually there was a knock on the door.

When her uncle opened it, there was a crowd there. The three warlocks she had seen before were holding a large wooden crate, helped by an unfamiliar man with grey hair and a moustache.

They walked in, struggling with their burden, and put it down in the middle of the floor.

"It's heavy, even for a clay statue," murmured her uncle.

The man with the moustache looked up. "The soul adds weight, you know."

He nodded to her uncle. "Aloysius Crumrin, I believe," he said.

He nodded back curtly. "Mr. Amherst."

"Did you finish the tablet?" Mr. Amherst asked.

Her uncle reached into his coat pocket and handed over the gray object that Courtney had seen before. It seemed to be covered with tiny writing, so small she couldn't tell which alphabet it was.

"I'm not a proper scribe, of course," her uncle said.

"Nonsense. You're the only warlock alive with the knowledge to make that tablet," said Mr. Amherst.

One of the other warlocks pointed at Courtney then and said something. She glared back at him.

"I don't think we need a virgin for this, Aloysius," said Frederick Amherst in a joking tone.

Her uncle gave him a look that could melt fire and said something in German. No one replied, and two of the warlocks began to take the top off the crate.

"I didn't unwrap it yet," Frederick Amherst way saying. "I just put it straight in there and rushed here with it."

Courtney pushed between two of the warlocks to look. When she leaned over the open crate, she saw a large man-shaped object wrapped in a piece of white cloth with black stripes. The men lifted it out and set in the floor.

When they set aside the wrapping, she saw a young man. He wore a short grey cloak, and short black pants that were puffy and pleated. He had long shaggy black hair under a round brimmed hat, and a wispy beard.

She looked up at her uncle. "That's not a statue. It's a guy."

He nodded. "It looks human, or there wouldn't be much point."

Mr. Amherst came over then and brushed the golem's hair off its forehead. There were two Hebrew letters on it.

"What's it say on his head?" Courtney asked.

"Meis," answered her uncle. "Death. When we add the letter aleph, it will spell "truth" and it will rise up."

"It's not an it," said Courtney. "He's a he. Can't you see that?"

"The tablet first, and then the word," said Frederic Amherst. "Shall we, gentlemen?"

Though he spoke in English, the other men spoke in obvious agreement.

Mr. Amherst opened the golem's mouth, and placed the tablet inside. Uncle Aloysius watched silently, then produced a small object that looked like a black pencil. He drew the letter on the creature's forehead.

Nothing happened for a moment, and Courtney was certain there had been a mistake. But then she saw one of his arms move. She held her breath as the young man opened his eyes and began to sit up.

She saw him look around in curiosity. The three warlocks from Prague were speaking in excited German. Frederick Amherst slapped her uncle on the back and got a glare in return. Aloysius Crumrin was still concentrating on the golem's actions.

The golem was blinking and looking around in confusion, but the other men were still congratulating each other. He didn't look like a protector who had been reactivated. He looked liked someone who had woken up from sleep in an unfamiliar place.

Courtney couldn't take it anymore. She walked up to him, looking slightly down into his face, and asked, "Are you OK?"

He looked back at her with clear brown eyes and didn't answer. "Say, what's your name?" Courtney continued.

"He can't speak, Courtney," said her uncle. "He's only does what's he's told; he has no will."

"He's got to have a name," she replied.

"Yossele," replied her uncle. "Rabbi Loew named him Yossele."

"Hi, Yossele," said Courtney, her tongue stumbling on the unfamiliar word.

"Do you think he understands English at all?" asked Mr. Amherst. "Or shall we try German? It would be closer to Yiddish."

"I don't think anyone needed to teach him any language," answered her uncle. "I think he simply understands. But I'm not certain my niece should be bothering him."

"I'm not bothering him," said Courtney belligerently. "Do you think he needs something to eat?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, Courtney? This is an automaton. He's doesn't speak, or eat, or need to do anything of the sort."

One of the German-speaking warlocks came and began speaking to the golem then, apparently giving him instructions. Yossele stood, and moved his arms and legs, just as he was told.

"Bring me some water," said Frederick Amherst then. The creature gave a small nod, and headed for the door.

"No, wait, come back!" the British warlock laughed.

"He doesn't know what a faucet is," he said. "He's thinking of a well."

"He's been stuck up in an attic for hundreds of years, genius," said Courtney.

The warlocks continued to give the golem instructions. He walked through the apartment, picking up objects and following every order. He occasionally made eye contact with them but the blank expression on his face almost never varied. Courtney grew more and more uncomfortable watching this, and several times tried to interrupt them, but Uncle Aloysius brushed her off.

"Hush, Courtney, no one is being hurt."

He stood silent for the most part himself, until Mr. Amherst ordered the golem to dance.

"Don't, Yossele," Aloysius Crumrin said. "Let's not be stupid, Mr. Amherst. This isn't a stage play."

Mr. Amherst settled for making the golem roll on the floor. When Courtney saw him there, looking up as if he didn't quite understand what he was being asked to do, she suddenly realized exactly who he reminded her of. She felt very sorry for the creature now.

Finally the warlocks were finished.

"We shall have to experiment on him," said Frederick Amherst. "This is going to be fascinating. But it's late now, and we humans need our sleep."

Courtney crossed her arms over her chest, not liking the sound of that. She already felt extremely protective of this lost young man. "What do you mean, experiment on him?" she asked.

"Test his capabilities. See exactly how much he can do before he fails."

"Fails?" asked Courtney. "You mean, until he falls apart or something? You've got to be kidding."

Mr. Amherst shrugged, "That could be interesting too. We'll have to take him apart eventually, anyway. It will help us build a new one."

Courtney stared at him shock. "A new one? What's wrong with this one?

"Well, he frightened most of Prague in his day, but it takes lot more to scare people now, doesn't it? We could do much better. We could build quite a few of them, I don't wonder. But we'll see how far this one gets before he crumbles first."

"He's sitting right there listening," said Courtney wildly. "How can you say that you're just going to—"

Uncle Aloysius interrupted. "Stop yelling, Courtney, or you'll have to go to your room."

"Uncle Aloysius, did you hear what he—"

"Do not be hysterical," her uncle replied in a slow measured tone. "I will speak to you later. Do you understand me?"

Courtney pressed her eyelids shut and fell silent. She was angry beyond words, and words were useless anyway.

Frederick Amherst was ignoring her now.

"Aloysius, I can't thank you enough for your participation." He looked at the awakened creature, who was sitting stiffly on the couch. "We'll just leave it here."

Uncle Aloysius merely watched them go. Courtney stood behind, shaking, wanting to scream at their backs but knowing they wouldn't listen.

When the door finally closed, Courtney and her uncle were left staring at each other in front of the silent creature.

Courtney began to yell in earnest. "They're going to hurt him? They went through all that to find him and bring him back, but they only did it so they could do something awful to him in the end. The Coven of Mystics here is a bunch of horrible jerks just like the one back home."

"You're being ridiculous, Courtney," replied Uncle Aloysius. "He's not a person."

"He has a soul," she replied. "They said it when they brought him in."

"That's not what they meant."

"Look at him!" she said, pointing to the figure on the couch. "He's like a kid; he can barely even grow a beard!"

"I must admit I never pictured him as looking so human," her uncle admitted. "All we had were stories, and pictures drawn from imagination."

"And you're going to help them take him apart?"

"This is the first I had heard of that part of Frederick Amherst's plans," he said mildly. "But it's not for me to say, especially now that it's been done. He belongs to Mr. Amherst more than he belongs to me, if anything."

"He doesn't belong to anybody except that dead rabbi. Who never wanted people like you to get their hands on him in the first place!"

"He's a piece of clay!" said her uncle, finally raising his voice.

"Like hell!" said Courtney. "Stand in front of my uncle, Yossele!"

The golem rose from the couch and faced Aloysius Crumrin.

"Look into his eyes, Uncle Aloysius. If he's not a person, why are you a person?"

Her uncle faced Yossele silently, and she saw her uncle's Adam's apple move as he swallowed.

"Courtney, there's really nothing we can—"

"Didn't you learn anything from Skarrow?" she shouted.

At the mention of that name, her uncle closed his eyes for a moment. There was a long pause, and she waited with pain in her chest for him to reply.

"Go to your room," he said.

"I'm not—"

"Go," he interrupted, "And get together anything you can carry in your pockets. Your clothes will have to stay behind."

"What are we doing? Can we save him?"

Her uncle nodded almost imperceptibly. "Just go. I have a spell to prepare."

She hadn't actually brought anything important with her, as she had few personal items. Her Uncle Aloysius was one of the only things that really mattered to her. She shoved her cheap camera and a few postcards into her pockets, and then stood for a few minutes to give Uncle Aloysius some time.

When she went back out he was reading from a book. "We're almost ready."

He looked at Yossele. "Wait a moment. He can't go out in those clothes."

He took his coat off and gave it to him. "Put this on, Yossele."

The silent figure took the coat and put it on, carefully fastening the buttons. Aloysius Crumrin stood there, looking slightly vulnerable in his shirt sleeves, then straightened himself proudly and said, "Come, both of you."

"Bring the tallis," he said to Courtney.

She looked at him puzzled.

He pointed to the striped garment that was still lying on the floor and said, "That prayer shawl."

She picked it up and rolled it into a bundle to carry.

They walked past the empty crate and out the door. "What are we going?" she asked.

"To the subway station," he answered. "I looked it up on the map. The last time I was here, they didn't have them."

"We can't take him home with us… can we?" asked Courtney.

"Of course not," answered her uncle. "But he'll be safe where we're going."

He led them down the sidewalk, Courtney looking around at the darkened buildings and at Yossele, following impassively behind them.

They went into the empty Metro station. Yossele hesitated at the escalator and looked wide-eyed. Courtney put her hand on his arm.

"It's OK, Yossele. It's just steps."

She showed him how to step onto it, and the three of them rode to the lower level. When they got there her uncle looked around, then faced the wall, beckoning the two of them to stand behind him.

Her uncle removed a piece of paper from his pocket and murmured words. Soon a hole opened in the wall, and Courtney could see a tunnel behind it.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Tunnels that Night Things built. Before Prague was a city, probably, and the Night Things who did this have been gone for a long time."

"We're hiding him down here? Doesn't everyone know about this place?" asked Courtney.

"The Night Things have been everywhere in the world, yes, but I think I'm one of the last ones alive to know where these particular tunnels go. Or to have the spell to open them. And keep in mind that no one has any idea that we're here."

Yossele entered the tunnel with no hesitation, and her uncle lit a match and said a spell to make it last. They walked for a long time, her uncle taking sudden twists and turns, until they reached a small open area.

"We're under the lowest layer of the Old Jewish cemetery now," Uncle Aloysius announced.

"Already?" asked Courtney.

"Yes," he said. "This is a place of the night; it doesn't work like the world above."

"They won't look here?" asked Courtney.

Her uncle shook his head. "They won't know to. They'll check the synagogue of course, whether the story I tell them works or not. But no one knows there's any way to get under here. Besides, this way he's protected by Rabbi Loew's grave."

Her uncle pointed up. "For him, that's better than any magic I could ever do."

He looked at Yossele. "It's time. Perhaps someday someone who deserves you will need you again."

The golem nodded. Courtney's uncle took the prayer shawl from her arms and shook it out. He wrapped it around Yossele, the fringes on it hanging down, leaving only his face exposed.

He helped the golem lie down against the wall. "Sleep," he said.

"Good-bye Yossele," Courtney said.

Her uncle reached out and wiped out one of the letters from Yossele's forehead. He then touched the golem's mouth, and turned to Courtney with the tablet in his hand.

He held it out to her. She took it from him and put it in her pocket. She didn't want to look at Yossele lying there. She just followed her uncle out, and they were silent until they reached the next tunnel.

"We'll take the quickest route to the surface, and then go to the train station. We can catch a train to Munich and from there, the next plane home."

"What will you tell them?" asked Courtney.

"I'll call them eventually with a story involving the golem escaping. I'll say that the two of us were being chased by police and had to run away ourselves. If they believe it, they do. If not, I doubt they'll come to the United States to confront me. Or our own Coven of Mystics. Even Frederick Amherst would fear to do that. He'll just find something else to be overly ambitious about."

"I hope not," said Courtney. "I hope he gets captured by Night Things and tortured."

"If that happened to everyone like him, almost no one would be left."

"And I'd be thrilled to death, Uncle Aloysius."

This tunnel ended in a wall. Her uncle said the spell again to open it and then burned the paper with a match.

As they went up the escalator to the surface, her uncle gestured to her hand, where she was again clutching the tablet that had been in Yossele's mouth.

"That's your responsibility now. That and the secret of where he lies."

Courtney opened her hand. "All right."

"Someday when you have children—"

"Fat chance!" she snapped.

Her uncle continued. "Someday when you are an old maiden aunt with annoying young relatives, find the one with the most potential to be decent and pass this on."

"Whatever," muttered Courtney.

"He'll be all right, Courtney," her uncle said, so softly she almost missed it.

Courtney sighed, and they entered the train station. She realized then that he had left his coat with Yossele. As he walked to the ticket counter, she thought again how different he looked without it, like a person who might be a powerful warlock or might be anyone capable of doing a more just thing.

"I'm proud of you, Uncle Aloysius," she said, wishing he could hear.


End file.
